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There are relatively equivalent weapons on Earth already. To reverse engineer Naruni stuff would be cost prohibitive and would net less than profitable results...

Sure...they might be able to incorporate some of the tech into your own manufacturing, but other than that, it's probably not really worthwhile...

They're trying, but so far there's no OFFICIAL successful knockoffs(plenty of fan knockoffs..guilty as self-charged )...in part due the fact that PB is devoting book space to products and technologies unique to each individual firm...THe major companies are right now too busy producing and promoting their own lines to do a crash reverse engineering program that will produce viable knockoffs in anything less than a few more years down the road..
Though you could argue already that Wilks' new laser cartridge system from New West could have come out of efforts to copy the Naruni system..

IMHO, the Naruni weapons drawn by Kevin Long for Cibola in Rifts South America could constitute regional variants made available by Naruni at extra expense to the Cibolans, to give their weapons a 'regional' look and confuse enemies who might be familiar with Naruni-tech...if the casings were locally made, Cibola could arguably also be working on duplicating the inner workings too, in order to boot out Naruni(risky, yes, and it will add another enemy to the Naruni Earth Division's Vengeance Volumes)...Inyx may have heard of the CS's campaign to knock out NE, and figures he can get away with something similar and more...

Nothing is cost prohibitive when you control the phantom economy

Rogue_Scientist wrote:

Shadyslug wrote:There are relatively equivalent weapons on Earth already. To reverse engineer Naruni stuff would be cost prohibitive and would net less than profitable results...

Weapons, yes. Body armor, PA, robots and vehicles? No, not really. At least not as of Wave 2!

I(or my company) would KILL to be able to reverse-engineer and mass-produce their own versions of NE modular and thermal-protective armors...
Not likely to happen, though...that WOULD toss Earth-campaign game balance out the door, and/or start a major corporate war between Naruni and anybody Earthside who'd knocked off the Wave 2 hardware and technology...

reverse engineering something that complex is not really in the grasp of north American peoples.

It might take decades to reverse engineer a Forcefield or learn the chemical processes behind a Naruni bullet or armor. Even with shortcuts like telemechanics they often deal with laws of physics human scientists don't even have words for yet let alone how to recreate.

its like giving a bronze age blacksmith with a working knowledge of swords a Katana and telling him its made mostly of iron and carbon and expecting him to be able to forge one.

rat_bastard wrote:reverse engineering something that complex is not really in the grasp of north American peoples.

....And we have a winner.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:reverse engineering something that complex is not really in the grasp of north American peoples.

....And we have a winner.

Actually as far as the guns go their actually pretty easy. It's just a bullet that produces plasma when ignited. Like a normal round does, it converts gunpowder into energy. I'd think the wolks system would be alot more complicated, converting some sort of chemical into a laser? That travels out like normal? Plasma's not a problem if you can do that. As far as barrels go that also is simple, take the same sheilding used in normal plasma ejectors, and lined the entire fire chamber with it. Heavy? totally, but very easy with earth tech.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:reverse engineering something that complex is not really in the grasp of north American peoples.

....And we have a winner.

Yes and no. It would depend, in part, on how different Triax and Naruni FF technologies were. Is Naruni fundamentally similar to Triax in technology, just ahead in terms of energy efficiency and sensitivity of sensors? Or do they use an entirely different way of producing a force field?

Mark Hall wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:reverse engineering something that complex is not really in the grasp of north American peoples.

....And we have a winner.

Yes and no. It would depend, in part, on how different Triax and Naruni FF technologies were. Is Naruni fundamentally similar to Triax in technology, just ahead in terms of energy efficiency and sensitivity of sensors? Or do they use an entirely different way of producing a force field?

One of those, yes.

Ravenwing wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:reverse engineering something that complex is not really in the grasp of north American peoples.

....And we have a winner.

Actually as far as the guns go their actually pretty easy. It's just a bullet that produces plasma when ignited. Like a normal round does, it converts gunpowder into energy. I'd think the wolks system would be alot more complicated, converting some sort of chemical into a laser? That travels out like normal? Plasma's not a problem if you can do that. As far as barrels go that also is simple, take the same sheilding used in normal plasma ejectors, and lined the entire fire chamber with it. Heavy? totally, but very easy with earth tech.

Explain to me how sand is made into a lens.

rat_bastard wrote:

Ravenwing wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

rat_bastard wrote:reverse engineering something that complex is not really in the grasp of north American peoples.

....And we have a winner.

Actually as far as the guns go their actually pretty easy. It's just a bullet that produces plasma when ignited. Like a normal round does, it converts gunpowder into energy. I'd think the wolks system would be alot more complicated, converting some sort of chemical into a laser? That travels out like normal? Plasma's not a problem if you can do that. As far as barrels go that also is simple, take the same sheilding used in normal plasma ejectors, and lined the entire fire chamber with it. Heavy? totally, but very easy with earth tech.

Explain to me how sand is made into a lens.

I havent a clue. Glass making wasn't a skill I ever learned.

However Firearms is a skill I both posses and understand. Since plasma ejectors are a tech the people of NA possess and understand. It isnt a very hard stretch of the imagination to figure that the weapons engineers of some nation, the CS for example, could figure out how to create a shell that produced the same chemical plasma reaction. Infact thats well within our level of tech. A simple Wikipedia search or Google will confirm this.

Ravenwing wrote:However Firearms is a skill I both posses and understand. Since plasma ejectors are a tech the people of NA possess and understand. It isnt a very hard stretch of the imagination to figure that the weapons engineers of some nation, the CS for example, could figure out how to create a shell that produced the same chemical plasma reaction. Infact thats well within our level of tech. A simple Wikipedia search or Google will confirm this.

By that logic, any civilization capable of making muskets could reverse-engineer and produce AK-47s, since both weapons fire bullets.

Considering the only north american chemical based plasma weapon has less than half the range and half the damage and never deals with the problem of containing plasma in a weapons barrel I'd say your ideas about plasma weapons are ambitious at best.

Rogue_Scientist wrote:It's actually much easier, and less expensive, to reverse-engineer a product than to come up with the original. This should be quite obvious, frankly, since if it weren't there would be very little motivation to do it. There's a reason we have patent laws and copyrights.

Agreed, but most people have only had a few years and this stuff is light years ahead of them.

in 10-20 years people will probably have knock off force fields, but these things take allot of time.

Show a guy the next rung up, and yeah, I think he'll figure it out.

problem is your not showing the next rung, your showing a rung five-ten rungs up.

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Ravenwing wrote:However Firearms is a skill I both posses and understand. Since plasma ejectors are a tech the people of NA possess and understand. It isnt a very hard stretch of the imagination to figure that the weapons engineers of some nation, the CS for example, could figure out how to create a shell that produced the same chemical plasma reaction. Infact thats well within our level of tech. A simple Wikipedia search or Google will confirm this.

By that logic, any civilization capable of making muskets could reverse-engineer and produce AK-47s, since both weapons fire bullets.

But that isn't as far fetched as it might sound.

A musket fires a caseless round. That round however follows the same configuration as a cartridge.
Now true the fireing chamber is differant. But a society capable of understanding firearms, would quickly be able to figure out the how the AK works. It's a simple blowback weapon. Given a few chunks of metal and a lathe and I can make it for you. No the problem with the Musket/Ak analogy isnt reverse-engineering it. Its the process of manufactuer.

The Plasma cartridges are well with in the capability of the people of rifts earth.

Plasma cartridge weapons are significantly different from most Rifts plasma weapons: first, the pistol itself appears to be completely mechanical rather than electronic (or at least the firing mechanism is) since they require no e-clip, and they even have a revolver version of the plasma cartridge pistol. The pistols & rifles could perhaps be duplicated by the other Rifts powers, but they're largely useless without being able to duplicate the ammunition.

Because the weapon's damage here is coming from the ammunition, which is greatly different from most other Rifts tech - either an entire, one-shot miniaturized plasma generator is in every round, or they contain plasma without degradation or loss of confinement indefinitely.

Even the pistols & rifles may not be easily duplicatable though - maybe whatever firing mechanism that is necessary to activate/release the plasma in the cartridges in these weapons is more complicated than it appears.

Ravenwing wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Ravenwing wrote:However Firearms is a skill I both posses and understand. Since plasma ejectors are a tech the people of NA possess and understand. It isnt a very hard stretch of the imagination to figure that the weapons engineers of some nation, the CS for example, could figure out how to create a shell that produced the same chemical plasma reaction. Infact thats well within our level of tech. A simple Wikipedia search or Google will confirm this.

By that logic, any civilization capable of making muskets could reverse-engineer and produce AK-47s, since both weapons fire bullets.

But that isn't as far fetched as it might sound.

A musket fires a caseless round. That round however follows the same configuration as a cartridge.
Now true the fireing chamber is differant. But a society capable of understanding firearms, would quickly be able to figure out the how the AK works. It's a simple blowback weapon. Given a few chunks of metal and a lathe and I can make it for you. No the problem with the Musket/Ak analogy isnt reverse-engineering it. Its the process of manufactuer.

Either way it nets out the same; can't build one.
Ditto with Rifts natives and Naruni tech.

The Plasma cartridges are well with in the capability of the people of rifts earth.

No, they're really not.

The CS came out of their caves and reverse engineered SAMAS, etc.

That to me would be as similar a 'gap' between a High tech maker and Naruni now.

And for the musket makers to AK-47s. Sure. Wheel lock firearms were made before flintlock and the wheel lock was much more complex. So complex it was difficult to repair on the battlefield, thus the adapting of the flintlock became norm.

killgore wrote:The only reason ever given in canon is; because the CS hunts down and destroys it all. Never mind that they hunt down and destroy every thing else as well.

So, yeah, people would be trying like mad to reverse engineer it all.

And yet nobody's come out with any, so it's apparently pretty hard to do.

As for success, that's another matter all together, though with psychic powers like techno-mechanics and super powers like mechano-link, I'd say they're pretty far along.

All that Telemechanics would do is to let you know a diagram of how the gun is put together, which wouldn't be all that helpful.

And that assumes that a shifter just doesn't rift himself to where there is some advanced tech available, and buy some tech manuals. This is an area I'd place societies with access to magic well ahead of the CS and Triax.

Yeah, they really, really, really downplay the ability to travel inter-dimensionally and the effects it could have on the game world.
But I'm going to assume that even with the manuals, the tech is too advanced to readily replicate on Earth.

The difficulty in reverse engineering something relies on three separate factors: the technological advancement of the engineers, and the technological advancement of the reverse engineers, and the compatibility between the two.

Let's use the example of force field technology. Our two sample corporations will be Triax and Naruni. Both currently have force-fields, though the Naruni are far better... smaller, less power-intensive, more powerful. Now, Triax gets its hands upon Naruni force-fields. They have an effectively unlimited supply, but only for research purposes... they can't just slap this theoretically unlimited supply on their machines.

Now, there are a few possibilities. The first is that the Naruni are using the same method of creating a force field as the NGR, but they're just doing a couple things better... the flux capacitor is arranged differently, making it smaller, lighter, and more efficient. Triax scientists look at it, slap each other's collective foreheads, and produce better force fields.

Then it may be that the Naruni are doing things completely differently. They don't even USE a flux capacitor, they use a hydro-spanner, and the NGR can figure out their different mechanics. They switch over to the hydro-spanner, and the flux capacitor becomes the Betamax of force fields.

The Naruni may also do things differently, and Triax has no idea how that sucker works. They use Telemechanics, they use Object Read, they use Machine Ghost, the break it apart and try to rebuild it, analayzing the molecular structure and the like, and they build lots and lots of copies until they make it work. This takes time and money that might be better spent improving their flux capacitor based system, which may turn out, in the end, to be even better than the Naruni hydro-spanner.

Those are a few ways it could go off the top of my head. Reverse engineering might be a very simple process... it might take years and millions of credits. It may turn out that you can reproduce the effect, but not cost-effectively. There's a lot possibilities.

Mark Hall wrote:The difficulty in reverse engineering something relies on three separate factors: the technological advancement of the engineers, and the technological advancement of the reverse engineers, and the compatibility between the two.

Let's use the example of force field technology. Our two sample corporations will be Triax and Naruni. Both currently have force-fields, though the Naruni are far better... smaller, less power-intensive, more powerful. Now, Triax gets its hands upon Naruni force-fields. They have an effectively unlimited supply, but only for research purposes... they can't just slap this theoretically unlimited supply on their machines.

Now, there are a few possibilities. The first is that the Naruni are using the same method of creating a force field as the NGR, but they're just doing a couple things better... the flux capacitor is arranged differently, making it smaller, lighter, and more efficient. Triax scientists look at it, slap each other's collective foreheads, and produce better force fields.

Then it may be that the Naruni are doing things completely differently. They don't even USE a flux capacitor, they use a hydro-spanner, and the NGR can figure out their different mechanics. They switch over to the hydro-spanner, and the flux capacitor becomes the Betamax of force fields.

The Naruni may also do things differently, and Triax has no idea how that sucker works. They use Telemechanics, they use Object Read, they use Machine Ghost, the break it apart and try to rebuild it, analayzing the molecular structure and the like, and they build lots and lots of copies until they make it work. This takes time and money that might be better spent improving their flux capacitor based system, which may turn out, in the end, to be even better than the Naruni hydro-spanner.

Those are a few ways it could go off the top of my head. Reverse engineering might be a very simple process... it might take years and millions of credits. It may turn out that you can reproduce the effect, but not cost-effectively. There's a lot possibilities.

very eloquent and very true.

Mark Hall wrote:...and the flux capacitor becomes the Betamax of force fields.

That's gold!

Talavar wrote:

Mark Hall wrote:...and the flux capacitor becomes the Betamax of force fields.

That's gold!

*bows*

Killer Cyborg wrote:

Ravenwing wrote:However Firearms is a skill I both posses and understand. Since plasma ejectors are a tech the people of NA possess and understand. It isnt a very hard stretch of the imagination to figure that the weapons engineers of some nation, the CS for example, could figure out how to create a shell that produced the same chemical plasma reaction. Infact thats well within our level of tech. A simple Wikipedia search or Google will confirm this.

By that logic, any civilization capable of making muskets could reverse-engineer and produce AK-47s, since both weapons fire bullets.

They could...the only thing that might be a problem would be mass production...

i don't think the wilks CFT are comparable to naruni stuff. the naruni ammo is a an electro-chemical reaction to convert a reactive material into a plasma charge. the real miricle is in the barrel, which has to confine, collimate, and accellerate the plasma. sure, RIFTS powers have the needed understanding of magnetics and magnetohydrodynamics, as evidenced with the plasma ejectors. but RIFTS powers lack the needed nanotech manufacturing abilities that allow the weapon to be built into the small scale applications that naruni uses. no one in RIFTS has made a pistol sized plasma ejector. naruni has. the smallest plasma ejectors on rifts earth are heavy rifle sized. naruni manufacturing abilities allow for really small scale and efficent magnetic systems to make it work.

rifts powers could probably duplicate the tech. but it would probably be much bigger. like "heavy machine gun" big.


now, the CFT tech isn't really described. it's said to fire "energy blasts". but what kind of energy? photons? charged particles? it can't be plasma, because plasma is matter, not energy.
whatever it fires, it certainly operates on a different principle. it's not electro-chemical. after all, it leaves expended cartridges. so it can probably best be looked at as small battery+weapon emmiter systems good for one shot each.

Krulton wrote: As for the Naruni plasma cartridge, there is a comparable weapon already written in the game. The Wilks laser cartridge.

Except that it's not comparable.
One fires off coherent light, and one fires off plasma.
It's kind of like saying that a flashlight is comparable to a blowtorch.

Stating that the people who made muskets would not slap their collective heads and say "Duh!" when handed an AK-47 gives no justice to their creative ability.

I think you need to brush up on your understanding of gun smithing.

Krulton wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:I think you need to brush up on your understanding of gun smithing.

Granted I'm not a gun smith. But the weapons are not that disimilar (depending on which musket you look at)
Pricussion cap vs. primer (for the more "modern" musket) (They dont use the same chemicals but function similar)
Black powder vs. smokeless powder (Not chemicaly similar at all)
Muzzle load vs. breach load (They would see the bullet, precussion cap and powder packaged together and understand the more convienent load mechanisms)
Smoothbore vs. rifling (more "modern" muskets had rifling)
And for completeness... single shot vs. full automatic (yea, would raise a few eyebrows but if they could get the cartridge to work they would see the benifit)

The ONLY issue I see a "modern" musket invetor having problems with is the cartridge.

Each step would be a problem.
Going to primer and smokeless powder would require chemistry skills beyond their capabilities.
Going to breech loading would likely require new and more complex machines.
Going to rifling would require new machines and new techniques for building the barrel of the weapon, but more importantly it would require the people trying to replicate the weapon to notice the rifling in the first place, and to understand the significance of the design, which seems unlikely to happen in any timely fashion.
Going from single-shot to full automatic would require all of the above changes (except rifling), and quite a bit more (deeper understanding of the design, more complex precision machinery, etc.).

Obtaining some AK-47s might help advance the technology of musket-makers simply by showing them the potential and pointing them in the right direction, but every major threshold of new technology is built upon (and therefore requires) other new technology. In this case, it would be technology that the musket-makers simply didn't have.

The actual rifle would be understood and duplicated with relitive ease except for the metalurgy. But then the weapon would just be heavier to compensate for the lack of structural strength.

Not just heavier, but bulkier all around.
And even then, I'm not sure that thickness alone would accomplish the same results.

And the difference between a musket and an AK-47 is a LOT less difference than that between a Naruni Plasma weapon and a Earth-built plasma weapon.
With an Earth-built weapon, the entire GUN is designed with the sole purpose of using energy from the E-Clip to create and direct a plasma blast.
With a Naruni Plasma Cartridge weapon, all the gun really does is to serve as a means to focus and direct the plasma that is created in the cartridge itself.
Look at a CS Plasma rifle.
Look at a Naruni Plasma Cartridge.
Notice the difference in size and structure.
Notice that a Naruni Plasma Cartridge lacks an E-clip.

Vastly different technologies, even if the effects are similar.

Personally I think the Naruni plasma cartridge weapons are really simple weapons made with incredibly complex materials.

Basically the method of turning whatever elements compose the bullets and materials of the guns barrels are so complex that only Naruni has a proprietary method of manufacturing them in a cost effective manner.

You don't have to engineer a gun, you have to figure out how the materials where made.

Considering how the CS feel about anyone using Naruni equipment and/or selling Naruni products it would be too much trouble imo for little gain. Anyone undertaking a serious attempt to do so better have access to a large army and lots of money. Otherwise the CS will permanlty put a stop to their efforts will copying their designs.

Here's another question:
The Naruni Guns seem pretty simple; it's the plasma cartridges that are where the firepower comes from.

How exactly are you going to crack one of those open to look at the insides?

Killer Cyborg wrote:Here's another question:
The Naruni Guns seem pretty simple; it's the plasma cartridges that are where the firepower comes from.

How exactly are you going to crack one of those open to look at the insides?

with gloves.

really nice gloves.

Of the powerbloc's in N.A. the only powerblock that in my estimation do knock offs with out the side effects of the Naruni comming in full force an taking / siezing the equipment would be , the Coalition .

To be sure others have the capabilities to do knock offs ..
Norther Gun
Ispeming
Iron Heart
Wilks
just to name a few but none of them have the resources to stop a Naruni "reaction" to them doing such a thing . And I for one think they have done so but not a direct copy of the Naruni equipment due directly to this explanation .

Course I very well could be wrong .

Killer Cyborg wrote:Here's another question:
The Naruni Guns seem pretty simple; it's the plasma cartridges that are where the firepower comes from.

How exactly are you going to crack one of those open to look at the insides?

Very carefully?

Killer Cyborg wrote:Here's another question:
The Naruni Guns seem pretty simple; it's the plasma cartridges that are where the firepower comes from.

How exactly are you going to crack one of those open to look at the insides?

Wooden or hard plastic, no spark, tools(like they use in manufacturing fireworks and explosives), microprobe, and a molecular analyzer to do spectrographic analysis...maybe remote x-ray, sonagram, or MRI a few before you even try to crack one open, just to try to get a look inside...selective dissolving of portions of it with nanobots to 'peel' it....

taalismn wrote:

Killer Cyborg wrote:Here's another question:
The Naruni Guns seem pretty simple; it's the plasma cartridges that are where the firepower comes from.

How exactly are you going to crack one of those open to look at the insides?

Wooden or hard plastic, no spark, tools (like they use in manufacturing fireworks and explosives), microprobe, and a molecular analyzer to do spectrographic analysis...maybe remote x-ray, sonagram, or MRI a few before you even try to crack one open, just to try to get a look inside...selective dissolving of portions of it with nanobots to 'peel' it....

... and hope that puncturing the shell isn't what sets it off.

Krulton wrote:a "modern" musket is not that far off from a semi-auto rifle.

OK, I don't know which muskets you are comparing to which semi-autos, but you are way off on this statement. The principle behind the firing mechanism of a semi auto is completely different than that of a musket. I just cannot see a gunsmith from the musket era smacking his forehead and saying "Why didn't I think of using the expelled gasses from the cartridge to push the bolt back and expel the spent cartridge in order to allow another cartridge to feed into the firing chamber from a spring-loaded magazine?" The only similarities are that they both uses a chemical propellant to launch a projectile down a rifled barrel in order to do some hurtin' at range.

I will agree with all the others in that the biggest problem will be knocking off the cartridge.

Archie 3 has been noted in several places of watching naruni enterprises as a possible alien menace.

I wouldn't be surprised if he has done some reverse engineering and is now sitting on it, mainly because he's working on other stuff.

Just out of curiosity why do you feel that Naruni goods would not be hard to knock off?

rat_bastard wrote:Just out of curiosity why do you feel that Naruni goods would not be hard to knock off?

I think most of us that think it could be done, are talking primarily of the plasma ammo. My reasoning is they seem very simple.

The Phase World Dimension Book does mention that Naruni Enterprises does have a Legal Department. So perhaps they are very aggressive in defending their products from knock-offs.

Ravenwing wrote: My reasoning is they seem very simple.

How so?

Why don’t you look up the Springfield 1855 musket, which was made in a rifled (as in the rifling in the barrel) in 1857?

Making it a "rifle," not the kind of musket that we're discussing.

Alexi wrote:

Making it a "rifle," not the kind of musket that we're discussing.

You are creating an artificial distinction between the terms riffle and musket.

Not so much.
The term "rifle" was originally short for "rifled musket," once rifling was introduced.
Over time, the term "musket" fell out of fashion, and they were just called "rifles."
The term "musket" today refers only to smoothbore guns.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/musket

mus·ket (mskt)
n.
A smoothbore shoulder gun used from the late 16th through the 18th century.

Beyond that rifling and breachloading were both known in the 17th century and used in the English Civil War, so pretty much have existed the whole time that muskets have existed.

Muskets came into use in the 16th century, which historians generally believe occurred before the 17th century.

My post had nothing to do with the barrel being rifled or not or copying the cartridge. It had to do with the firing chamber and the physics behind it. While the physics may be simple to us, to an 16th century gunsmith it would be mind boggling. Without the proper metallurgical technology, they may not be able to create a firing chamber that will be able to handle the stress needed to have the firing mechanism function.

Back to the topic: If they survive the bloodthirsty Naruni Lawyers and Repobots, a large Earth tech power MAY be able to reproduce a Naruni weapon, but there are a few things that may keep them from marketing them.

1. Cost. If it costs too much in R&D or in manufacturing, then the project will get canned. I imagine the cost of reproducing these weapons will be extremely high. Think of it like this: We have the technology to turn lead into gold (I believe it is called nuclear transmutation), but the cost of the procedure is exponentially more than the value of the gold produced.

2. Size and weight of the weapon. OK, they were able to copy the effect of the weapon, but due to "primitive" fabrication technology, the weapon is 2-4 times larger and heavier.

3. Reduced effect. For similar reasons to #2, the damage and/or range of the weapon is reduced.

Shades of Eternity wrote:Archie 3 has been noted in several places of watching naruni enterprises as a possible alien menace.

I wouldn't be surprised if he has done some reverse engineering and is now sitting on it, mainly because he's working on other stuff.

He may have forgotten about it.

Krulton wrote:

sennin wrote:My post had nothing to do with the barrel being rifled or not or copying the cartridge. It had to do with the firing chamber and the physics behind it. While the physics may be simple to us, to an 16th century gunsmith it would be mind boggling. Without the proper metallurgical technology, they may not be able to create a firing chamber that will be able to handle the stress needed to have the firing mechanism function.

Muskets fired a 58 caliber ball at about 30 grams in weight and used approximately 10 grams of black powder to fire. In comparison, an AK47 fires a 7.62x39mm (about 29 caliber) at 8 grams and uses about 1.6 grams of smokeless powder. Now smokeless powder has an energy density of about 3 times that of black powder, accounting for that a musket uses 3 times as much powder. 16th century metallurgy would be capable of supporting such a weapon.
Yes, I know it is normal to use grains when referring to bullet and powder weight but I figure it is easier to use a weight that more people would recognize.
I do notice that you have shifted the time back some. From my uses of early to mid 1800's to your 1500's. Many of my points become much harder to argue within that timeframe.
That being said. I do agree with you that the cost, size and damage would different when produced by earth manufacturers.

Sorry, didn't mean to shift time unannounced. I figured that was an appropriate gap for comparing the North American tech powers to Naruni. Keep this in mind when it comes the the firing chamber of a musket or early black powder rifle - there are no moving parts in the firing chamber. With their level of fabrication technology, can they make parts small and light enough to be effected by the forces and yet be strong enough not to break? I.E. can someone in the 16th (or 18th) century manufacture a spring that is small enough to fit in the chamber, strong enough to force the bolt back into place, and durable enough to last more than a few firings?

Maybe the -40% for alien tech makes it harder and therefore not profitable. Also I'm petty sure somewhere in phase world books it says that at least their force field tech are rigged to destory its self, but I could just be crazy.